FYI,

"Making the Moon Pay"
MSNBC
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/07/28/2012537.aspx

: Forty years ago, moon landings were exclusively the province of
: superpowers - but today, commercial ventures are trying to turn
: lunar missions into profitable businesses. Do such dreams represent
: one small step for high-tech entrepreneurship, or do they require
: an overly giant leap of faith?

: Ramin Khadem, a veteran of the telecom satellite industry, thinks
: there's definitely money to be made on the moon. That's not
: surprising: As chairman of Odyssey Moon Limited, he's in charge of
: one of the ventures planning to deliver commercial payloads to the
: moon - not 40 years from now, but sometime in the next five years.

: "The moon is almost like an eighth continent," Khadem told me.
: "It's within the planet Earth's own economic sphere ... Our
: approach has been to explore this eighth continent. Just as
: explorers went to the new world and found all sorts of great
: things, we think there are opportunities there."

: The only problem is, we've known for the past 40 years that the
: "eighth continent" is within reach - but nothing has come of it. In
: fact, "Right Stuff" novelist Tom Wolfe argued around the time of
: this month's Apollo 11 anniversary that the fate of lunar travel
: was sealed once the moon race was won.

: Today's NASA would never take the risks that NASA did in 1968 and
: 1969 by sending astronauts on just-barely-tested spacecraft to the
: moon - primarily because there's no longer any Cold War-scale
: reason to do so. Nothing has been done on the moon's surface, by
: humans or by robots, since 1972 (except for crashing).

: So why should the economic equation be any different five years
: from now?

: 'The next stage'?

: Khadem, who once served as chief financial officer for the Inmarsat
: telecom consortium, is feeling as if it could be deja vu all over
: again.

: "I've been in the satellite business for many years," he said. "If
: you look back 40 years or so, the satellite business was in its
: infancy. Now, we've got a huge business at 34,000 kilometers in
: space - a multibillion-dollar business which is actually a huge
: benefit to mankind."

: The benefits of the commercial satellite revolution - ranging from
: better weather forecasts to globe-girdling communication links
: - came "as the result of some risk taking" in Earth orbit, Khadem
: said.

: "We think the moon itself is the next stage," he said.

: Like 18 other teams, Odyssey Moon is working to put a rover on the
: moon by 2014 to win a big piece of the $30 million Google Lunar X
: Prize. But the venture is also lining up customers for lunar
: delivery services as well.

: "We've got a number of customers already," Khadem said. "When we
: last put out an RFI (request for information), we got 27 responses,
: and there are a number of responses that are still outstanding."

: Khadem estimated that Odyssey Moon had enough payload potential to
: fill up its first launch. "We can fill up the second launch as
: well, and we've only scratched the surface," he said.

: If all those plans come to fruition, the prospects for profits are
: good. That's a big "if," however. Khadem said he recognized that
: rocket science is an inherently risky business. "The model that we
: know in the satellite business and telecom can be applied here," he
: said.

: Just this month, Odyssey Moon announced that it was bringing a
: "dream team" of corporate partners into its venture, including
: banking specialists (Near Earth LLC), marketers (The Brand Union /
: WPP), insurance experts (Aon) and lawyers (Milbank, Tweed, Hadley &
: McCloy).

: Odyssey Moon is working as well with other partners that have
: experience in the spacecraft business, such as NASA's Ames Research
: Center (which is developing the lunar lander); prime contractor
: MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (the Canadian company behind
: the robotic arms on the space shuttles and the international space
: station); and Paragon Space Development (which is working on the
: lander and its thermal control system as well as a mini-greenhouse
: for the moon).

: The moon market

: Who are the customers? Khadem won't go much beyond generalities.
: "Our main business is simply carrying payload for customers,
: whoever they may be, and obviously for peaceful purposes of all
: kinds," he said.

: A study conducted by Futron Corp. for the X Prize Foundation
: estimated that the 19 teams chasing the Google Lunar X Prize could
: serve a market of $1 billion or more in the next decade.

: "We examined a wide range of markets that teams could address, both
: those that exist today and those that could be enabled by low-cost
: commercial lunar exploration," Futron senior analyst Jeff Foust was
: quoted as saying. "If one or more teams are able to win this prize
: competition, they will be able to serve markets potentially far
: larger than the prize purse."

: For now, the primary payoff would come in the form of technology
: and scientific data: How will a gizmo designed for NASA's future
: moon missions actually work in the lunar environment? How much more
: can be learned about the moon's makeup, or about potential lunar
: resources? What kinds of observations can be made from the moon?

: "Associated with this business there will be marketing and
: advertising," Khadem said. That could take the form of corporate
: logos plastered on the spacecraft. More ambitious schemes might
: call for setting up an exclusive video feed from the moon, for use
: in TV shows, movies or video games. You could let tourists take a
: spin around the lunar landscape via virtual reality. One company
: even says it will use a specially tracked rover to trace out
: advertising messages in moondirt (although the current launch
: prospects are uncertain).

: If samples could be returned from the moon, that could open up yet
: another type of market. Apollo-vintage moondust and moon rocks are
: valuable commodities on Earth, strictly controlled by NASA, and
: even meteorites from the moon can sell for six figures, lunar
: scientist Paul Spudis noted last week on his "Once and Future Moon"
: blog.

: Looking ahead

: In the longer run, lunar operations could conceivably supply an
: outpost with raw materials ranging from solar power, drinkable
: water and breathable oxygen to building materials, as outlined in
: an essay written by Spudis and two other moon-watchers. And in the
: even longer run, some people suggest the moon could yield beamed
: energy or fusion fuel.

: All this eventually gets back to the original question: If there
: are profit possibilities on the moon, why have they been neglected
: for all this time?

: The biggest missing piece in the commercial moon puzzle is having a
: reliable, affordable launch vehicle that can reach the lunar
: surface. That challenge is something that the Google Lunar X Prize
: could well address.

: California-based SpaceX, for example, is offering a 10 percent
: discount on launch costs for X Prize launches to the moon - a
: factor that the X Prize Foundation took into account when the rules
: for the challenge were written. "We tried to write it so that it
: was just barely winnable on a Falcon 1," said Will Pomerantz, the
: foundation's senior director for space prizes.

: At least one X Prize competitor, Romania's ARCA team, is developing
: its own rocket for a future moon mission. The Helen launch vehicle,
: which is designed for launch from a high-altitude balloon platform,
: is due to be tested in August or September.

: In their essay, Spudis and his colleagues argue that small steps
: leading to lunar settlement - including new breeds of reusable
: launch vehicles, new processes to take advantage of resources on
: the moon and new opportunities for private enterprise - could
: succeed where another Apollo-style giant leap just might fail:

: : "It is clear to us is that we are neither doing the right things
: : in space nor are we are doing things right. Frankly, we do not
: : think that it is possible to do much worse. The United States
: : spends more money on space through our government than all other
: : governments put together and we get less results on a dollar for
: : dollar basis. Day by day more bad news about slipped schedules,
: : enormous cost overruns, and lost capabilities make it into the
: : news. It is beyond time to change the way that we conduct
: : spaceflight, and if we choose to make this spaceport/settlement a
: : reality, we will completely transform our aerospace industrial
: : system. This rearrangement will save taxpayers billions of
: : dollars while increasing our operational capabilities."

Mark Reiff